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The story of the prolegomena prior to Systematic theology
The Theological endeavour The etymology of theology is “Theos” + “Logy” the study of God, or God's Word. Systematic theology is thus the systematisation of the study of God; or differently put, but more comprehensive, the philosophical structuring of the study of God according to the vocabulary and self-invented categories of philosophy. Philosophy's etymology is the love of wisdom, and it doesn't take a degree to recognise that 'systematic' theology is also (attempting) philosophy. This structuring endeavour of philosophy, however, has proven itself problematic though, since philosophy is fundamentally built on a set of cultural/cognative presuppositions and norms (by clicking on each respective word a link will take you to the definition of the word), and these presuppositions and norms differ cognitively from culture to culture, and epoch to epoch, etc. To take an example, a/the African philosophy is Ubuntu and has a whole set of different presuppositions and believes than European philosophy with its Greek systematisation and presuppositions. In short, theology from one cognitive matrix (3D-grid) can't be stuck on another cognitive matrix, and therefore systematic in systematic theology should actually be ditched, or either be redefined for this module to make sense in the cognitive pool/melting pot that makes up Africa. However, since SYSTEMATIC theology is a prerequisite for ordination, although many of the learners in this module will be cognitively European, we opted for a redefinition, an African like systematic theology. For this purpose we have to make sure that we understand the prolegomena from where we do theology. Actually a presupposition of Liberation Theology is that theology should be done from the bottom up, not like the last 1600+ years where theology is being done from the top down by white intelligent middle class men, since it is only 'simple' people that can understand the Bible. The point of departure in this module is that every born again child of God, understanding his or her prolegomena, is able to do sound theology, and thus the aim of this module is theologising, rather than just learning theology. In short, you are going to construct your own Wesleyan-Armenian theology for your context where you are ministering with your contextual presuppositions and worldview. Your Prolegomena What is the prolegomena? The etymology of prolegomena is from the Greek Pro which means “before” and Legomena which means “to speak” or “to say.” So prolegomena means the things that need to be said beforehand in order to give the learner a better understanding. In other words, analysing one's prolegomena is to determine the flight plan from where to proceed, and in our case, the direction each one's theological model will take and ultimately, or fatally, determines all logical conclusions possible in the theological module. It is like a plane setting off for a destination, a degree or two difference at the start will make a huge difference over a 1000 km, and where the plane will end up ultimately. An example is the stationary omniscient (knowing everything) Greek God presupposition through Greek and Latin church tradition. If God knows everything on a linear time line, then the only logical conclusion of such a theological module is predestination, since if God already knows the future exhaustively, then nothing can happen differently from how God already knows it. This is called fatalism. A different presupposition in a different flight plan can be rather a riemannian geometrical “time line” where time is not linear, but relative (Einstein’s theory of relativity E=mc2), and although we experience time linear on our watches, God knows the future because the future happens simultaneously with the present. In short, in riemannian geometrical time, time travel is not a flight of imagination, but a reality as the Hafele and Keating experiment, in October 1971, illustrates. This experiment was conducted with cesium atomic beam clocks placed in normal catered planes flying around the earth. One clock stayed in the USA, while others were sent twice around the world, both westwards and eastwards. When all the clocks got back together there was a time difference on them, corresponding exactly to the calculations of the relativity theory. What it means is that one clock was in the future of another clock in space-time. If this is the case, irrespective how little, what prevents or limits God (the Lord of natural laws) to go into the future, or experiencing the future simultaneously with the present? In African time (not timelessness), all is in the present, and illustrates that Africa is actually in the place to understand the riemannian geometrical “time-line” the best. Because of this Africa is actually in the best position to free Wesleyan-Armenian theology from a contaminating Greek/Calvinistic logic that has always been a thorn in the flesh for most models. To put it differently, our prolegomena is the cognitive toolbox with which we do theology. Michael Patton says: In theology prolegomena refers to the issues of theology that need to be learned before one can learn anything further. These issues include theological methodology—how do you do theology? issues of epistemology—how do we acquire knowledge? overviews of theological systems and traditions—what is the difference between traditions? and sources for theology—where do we go for truth? It provides the “rules of engagement” for learning truth. In short, prolegomena is starting at the very beginning. (Patton, n.d.) The two main classifications of the tools in our toolbox are, #epistemology #ontology and together they (in)form our norm and methodology and in turn enable our philosophising/theologising. Epistemology Epistemology is a whole philosophical field of its own and far beyond the objective of this module, and therefore not much more than an introduction and an application is possible in this module. If you have followed the link for the definition on epistemology above, you would know that epistemology is about how we obtain knowledge, in short, how do we know what we know. This is very important to know, since when we come to the Scriptures we bring a whole library of knowledge to the enterprise, otherwise the Scriptures would be gibberish. First of all, we bring the language that we are competent in to the Scriptures, but the thing is, this language lives us, this language thinks us and not we the language. In short, we are not the inventors of this language, but rather slaves of this language. This is one of the major contributions that philosophy has made to epistemology in the 19th and 20th century. A very significant figure in this is Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher at Cambridge university who came up with the notion of language games and the cognitive relativism due to different comprehensions in or of these games. This combined with the work of someone like Jean Baudrillard, who became famous for the notion called simulacra, simulations void of what is being simulated, since it got lost. Am example is something like a map from the middle ages where the territory looks completely different today than from what the map used to depict. In his philosophical modal it is turned around where the map has actually become a whole lot more than the territory, or just something else altogether. This illustrates the abstract social construction of our cognition in and through our language through which we understand the world. In short, our cellphones, and tablets and smart phones, and computers, and Mercedes Benz cars and..., weren't created by God in the beginning, but are abstract social constructions. Social since it is corporately owned (no private language), and constructed since they didn't come with creation and I'm not so sure we can credit all these devices and contraptions and cars, etc., to God. I'm not sure I'd credit God with the invention and destructive power of nuclear bombs, or even as little as processed food on our tables, produced in the profit chain of capitalism, so that people eat themselves full, but die of hunger due to lack of nutrition? In Genesis 11, in the story of the tour of Babel, God said that due to a common language humankind has literally reached a point of no limits (Genesis 11:6). Doesn't that sound like our industrialised world today where yesterday's science-fiction is today's science? A window of opportunity is another example of a simulacrum, what does Microsoft Windows have to do with opportunities? Or is it a window in the wall we look through that offers an opportunity? What is an opportunity? Only a metaphor, or what? Did God think of a table when He created Table Mountain, or is it our social construction after we came up with a table? Somewhere someone came up with the notion table; I don't read about it in Genesis 1 and I haven't seen a table growing on a tree yet. Before you go on click on the following link Cognition to read my exposition in my doctor's dissertation on cognition (you're obligated to read this). Taking this one step further, language is only the (spare)parts of what we call narrative, and this narrative lives us. In short, we understand everything in what is called the narrative paradigm; our epistemology is in narrative, but the problem is, narrative itself evades our understanding (like the wet soup in the shower we try to pick up and keeps on popping out of our hands). Narrative is so easy to utilise, but beyond our understanding, since every definition of narrative is also a narrative and so a narrative can't define a narrative because it also only a narrative. How do we know that this narrative, that is a definition, don't need to be defined by another narrative? The typical American, or German, or Boer, or Zulu is an example of how narrative lives us and why we like the same food and music and cultural values than our parents or peers, etc. The word stereotype captures this notion very well and why we so easily brand others as typical, e.g., why we in Europa first hear Americans before we see them. This is where epistemology cuts through ontology (the study of being), but staying at epistemology, why we exclusively know what we know in and through the relationships we are tied to. In short, epistemology is a corporately owned matrix we are plugged into in space-time. To take an example, until today I've never seen a virus, but they tell me when I get a flue it is due to a virus. Why do I believe/know this epistemologically? Solely through the relationships I stand in. Even if someone puts a microscope before me and shows me a virus (the little thing moving around), I'll only believe what I see is a virus through the quality of the relationship I have with the person telling me this. When my mum told me as a boy to brush my teeth otherwise the plaque is going to ruin my teeth, I just believed her. Actually until today I haven't seen this plaque, only dirt on my teeth, but I believed her due to the nature of the relationship. Should my wife one morning look out the window and tell me the sun is purple, I'm most likely to believe her and actually go to the window myself and look why this is the case this particular morning, rather than disbelieving her. Should an aborigine in Australia, however, tells me the sun is purple, I'll be very sceptical and rather perceive it as an example of a subjective perception by the aborigine (and thus believe him or her in his or her illusion maybe due to drugs or something). Is this not the reason why a Muslim in the Middle East would be sceptical to think Jesus is the Son of God should a westerner come by and tells him or her the likes? Aren't we convinced that God lives and exists through the matrix of the relationships we are plugged in, rather than seeing God with our own eyes? Shouldn't we rather have empathy with children growing up in atheist homes, and actually understand why they think there is no God? Would anyone of us have been different should we have grown up in such a house? Should we have had a different epistemology in such a narrative matrix? I know prevenient grace can map the territory differently, but take note, the emphasis on grace, and on grace only, in this prevenient grace; the freedom to know God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is only grace, and the matrix of relationships to construct the right knowledge also only grace. In another set of relationships I would certainly have been a completely different person (ontologically) with a different epistemological paradigm. Should I have grown up in the outback’s of China, my world would have looked completely different today and I might have been a heathen today. So this bring us to the question, what is your epistemologically paradigm that you bring to the Scriptures? For the Africans believing in dreams, and God talking through dreams, is no epistemological barrier to knowledge and even a source of epistemology. For the westerner empirical science is the source, par excellence, of epistemology, through which dreams can be analysed and physiologically explained. So if we say the Wesleyan quadrilateral, Scripture, reason, experience and tradition, is our source of epistemology for theology, this has altogether a different meaning according to the epistemological paradigm we are plugged into. The African experience of seeing God in everything can't be compared to the western experience seeing (a transcendent) God in nothing. For an African God is somehow involved in every flue, while for the westerner a virus is involved in every flue and maybe, but only maybe, also God. In the western paradigm the cosmos functions exclusively with natural laws, and the transcendent God's interaction with the cosmos is always supernatural. In Africa natural and supernatural are superfluous categories. The tribalism of traditional Africa has a completely different epistemology than the individualism championed in the west. Is this not why Africans rather find themselves in the Old Testament, and westerners in the New Testament, and why the ZCC church is appealing to Africans and not to westerners? If tribalism is the tradition of Africa, individualism is the tradition of westerners but non the less tradition. Nothing shows the difference between the respective epistemological paradigms more than reason. Dr. Enoch Litzwele, the former NTC principle, used to highlight this contrast the best by using the illustration of what an African or westerner, respectively, would consider when joining a new church. He says the African would go to a church and see if he or she likes the people, the atmosphere, the ambience, etc., and if that is the case, he or she will join the church and then ask “What do I have to believe now?” The westerner would first look what the church, or churches, believe, and if her or she likes what they believe, he or she will join the church. In short, in traditional Africa belonging comes before believing, and thus knowing, and then reasoning, while for the westerner apparently knowing and believing, empowering reasoning, come first and then belonging, but in the face of the relational matrix argued above, that is only an illusion, the westerner also first belongs and then believes, even if the belonging is only to the west, to Greek infused philosophy. This brings us then strait to ontology. Ontology Ontology is also a philosophical branch on its own, and a vast field in its own right, and again can only by summatively used by us to get to the right prolegomena for the task we actually want to accomplish. Ontology is about being, what we are. The being of the westerner is individualism where all processes between individuals are based on a cause-and-effect, like billiard balls on a billiard table where the trajection of the balls is mathematically analysable and systematically presentable. In this paradigm knowledge is currency passed on from individual to individual. Individualism is why the westerner finds all the passages in the Scriptures with an individualistic ring to it appealing, e.g. Revelation 3:20: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (The Bible) The anyone is highlighted to emphasis this individualistic glasses. In African Ubuntu though, being human through other humans argues an altogether different ontology. In African Ubuntu the individual doesn't exist, every single person is only an extension of the group, tribe or community. In this paradigm processes are not subjected to a cause-and-effect, but a dependent arising. This again sound very much like the tribalism of the Old Testament, and why Holy Wars are even justified in the Old Testament, since whole communities were dependently corrupted, not individuals. Ontology and epistemology are then only two sides of the same coin and turns out to be very fluid and almost impossible to fix with definitions. Almost every shade of a mixture between ontology and epistemology can be justified, or condemned, by the Scriptures, and again illustrates that we are caught in the grip of narrative, a narrative that lives us. It is like checking up the meaning of a word in a dictionary, the explanation of the word is narratively explained with other words, but each word in the explanation is also only explainable through narratives, and these words through narratives, and these words through narratives.... We see and understand the world through the glasses of our respective ontological and epistemological cocktails/narratives and the relativity is a cognitive relativism. Nowhere in the Scriptures slavery is condemned, and I don't think Sarah, Abraham's wife, was doing anything wrong having an Egyptian slave (not to mention using her as an extension of her body by asking Abraham to make her pregnant), but today I would say slavery is sin, and I think I have enough Scriptural support to justify that. Holy Wars is another example. God commanded Holy Wars in the Old Testament, but should someone tell me today that God commands a Holy War I'd be very sceptical and doubt that he or she has heard God indeed. Some theologians came up with a nice notion called progressive revelation to account for these “allowances”, like slavery and even human trafficking, etc., in the Scriptures. There might be some truth in this (although I have a problem with the notion revelation assuming a transcended God), but is progressive revelation then not just the other side of the same cognitive coin, that's now if progressive can be justified in the first place? A question would rather be, is slavery really abolished? If 50% of Germans in Germany today only own 1% of Germany, and the rich top 10% 50% of Germany. Is our free-market system, within capitalism with its two economies (a goods' economy and a financial economy), not just a new form of slavery, since those with the surplus parked in the financial economy are the only economic free ones? The others are nothing but labour to create more surplus; batteries for the rich. Should Abraham have ported to our world today, could it not have been that he had felt he had the progressive revelation we must still learn since the working conditions, and sharing of surplus in his economy might have been better than today's individualistic capitalism of selfishness and consumerism in philosophical hedonism coupled with the annihilating of all opposition, not to mention the trust he had in God, even in the face of old age and the willingness to offer his one and only son at this age. Do you see the challenge doing theology in the face of the Scriptures not condemning slavery? Or do the Scriptures indeed condemn slavery? Capital punishment is another thorny topic. Today one Christian condemns capital punishment, and rightly so out of the Scriptures, while another one also rightly justifies capital punishment with the Scriptures. In short a cognitive relativism is pasted all over the scriptures, and church history and between continents today. The Paul that we are reading of in the Scriptures today, is a virtual identity of Paul, although inspired by the Holy Spirit. I'm convinced, if we could beam back in history to the times of Paul, we would have a cultural shock of our lives and we would meet a completely different Paul than what we have imagined, and Paul might even have a thing to say about the theology we have constructed from his writings. To put it in other words, Paul is a Holy Spirit inspired simulacrum, or how I put it in my dissertation, a resuscitated simulacrum to a simulation through the Holy Spirit. Still in other words, we have only the Holy Spirit today, that accommodates culture. The Paul of 2000 years ago is in heaven today. If culture shock is so prevalent and intense in today's global village, how much more over two millennia? Should it be the other way around that Paul could beam to us today, I also think he'll have the culture shock of his life. This cognitive relativism is probing our challenge of doing theology, since Africa is not America, or Europe or Asia, and thus Africa deserves its own theology, although we are embedded in the tradition of the Church of the Nazarene, and that by choice. Whoever is doing this module, decided to belong to the Church of the Nazarene. Up until know I've said a lot about narrative, and maybe this notion is still gibberish to you. At his point I want you to first read my chapter 7 of my doctor's dissertation, called The Narrative Container (click on the link to take you there). A lot in this chapter you might not understand, and I don't expect that of you, but I at least want you to get the gist of the story and socially construct, or challenge, your own prolegomena. Norm Our respective mixed cognitive cocktails, with epistemology and ontology, informs our norms/glasses with which we approach the Scriptures. Another philosophical synonym for the norm is reductionism, in short this is the process of reducing one's whole complex theological model to one single concept or notion. An example is our renown theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, in her book Theology of love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism, reducing the whole Wesleyan model to the notion love. This book can be downloaded for free from the Wesleyan Centre at NNU. Click on the name above to take you to the book. Another contemporary philosopher and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene applying the same reductionist model is Thomas Jay Oord at NNU. He reduces his whole theological model to the following definition: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic/empathetic response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. (17) For some theologians, like my DTh supervisor, this reductionism is exactly the fallacy of modern theology, and the adultery of certainty, but the question is, can we ditch a reductionism if even Jesus utilised it to summarise all the commandments in the Shema (the first love commandment) and love for our neighbours: Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (The Bible, Matthew 22:37-40). The problem with this reductionism is, however, that love is so abstract, and fluid to define as a narrative-mark in different narrative-matrixes, that other notions in Scripture can do better to enfold/embrace love. In short, because love has become so ambiguous, due to culture applications and accommodations, that the narrative explanation of love itself has turned out to be another norm and reductionism. In short, defining love already begs for a norm and a reductionism which then already precedes the abstract notion love. Hannes Nortje (talk) 15:15, February 7, 2014 (UTC)I personally constructed my theological model around the norm(s) Sabbath and Shalom. Sabbath, not as a particular day, but the Sabbath rest of the Garden of Eden, and the Sabbath rest of (spiritual) abundance in the presence of God, as depicted in Hebrews 3-4, the Promised Land and heaven one day. Shalom is not just peace, or the heaven of peace, but overall well-being. Bibliography #Oord, Thomas Jay, 2010. The nature of love: a theology. St. Louis: Chalice Press. #Patton, Michael, (n.d.). Theology: Let's Start at the Very Beginning. online Available at: 7 March 2013. #The Bible: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, 2011. Colorado Springs: Biblica, Inc. #Wynkoop, Mildred Bangs, 2007. Theology of love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism. Nampa: NNU.